


Irrational Numbers

by shiphitsthefan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/F, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Genderqueer Castiel, Gratuitous Hamilton References, M/M, Nerdiness, Pi Day, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 08:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10302059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/pseuds/shiphitsthefan
Summary: Jo props her feet up on the library table, legs resting across her homework. A blade of morning-damp grass brushes off the sole of one of her worn-out sneakers. “It’s a circle. It’s a shape no one can properly draw without selling their soul first.““Pi isn’t a circle. It’s a ratio of a circle’s diameter to its radius.” Charlie sighs, playing with the earbud that isn’t funnelingHamiltoninto her brain like an intravenous drip. “I know you’d rather draw comics and doodle during lectures–”“You write fanfic in class. It’s not like I’m the only one not paying attention.”“I’m the TA, Jo," admonishes Charlie. "I’m not the junior stuck in a freshman class who needs to bring her grade up to stay on the forensics team.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Pi Day! Here's a _Mathnatural_ fic to celebrate. :D
> 
> Betaed by the one-and-only, mathemagical [aerialiste](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aerialiste/pseuds/aerialiste/works). <3

Jo knows she’s not the sharpest of protractors when it comes to Mr. Singer’s geometry class. It didn’t bother her that she had to study her ass off for the last test, trying to figure out how to even _spell_ hypotenuse, let alone measure one. (A-squared, b-squared, c-squared, right triangles only. She’s got that shit on lockdown now.) Jo got an 85, and she was perfectly fine with that.

But this? This is ridiculous.

“No,” Charlie tells her from over her open textbook, “it’s irrational.”

“It’s a _circle,”_ says Jo. “Fucking Pythagor-ass found a way to complicate a goddamn _circle.”_

“Archimedes,” corrects Charlie.

“Who cares?” Jo props her feet up on the library table, legs resting across her homework. A blade of morning-damp grass brushes off the sole of one of her worn-out sneakers. “It’s a circle. It’s a shape no one can properly draw without selling their soul first.“

“Pi isn’t a circle. It’s a ratio of a circle’s diameter to its radius.” Charlie sighs, playing with the earbud that isn’t funneling _Hamilton_ into her brain like an intravenous drip. “I know you’d rather draw comics and doodle during lectures–”

“You write fanfic in class. It’s not like I’m the only one not paying attention.”

“I’m the TA, Jo. I’m not the junior stuck in a freshman class who needs to bring her grade up to stay on the forensics team.”

Jo grumbles and starts clicking her mechanical pencil in frustration. “I just don’t see how I’m going to be able to recite 314 digits of pi when I can’t even wrap my brain around the concept,” she says. “You know how I am with numbers, Hermione. I was barely able to memorize the quadratic formula last year, even with your stupid little song.“ Charlie opens her mouth to start singing it, but Jo leans over and puts her finger on her lips and tells her, “Don’t.”

She bites at Jo’s finger, finally shooing it away with a hand as she frowns. “If you didn’t need the extra credit…”

Jo scratches the shaved side of her head thoughtfully. “I could always get a magnifying glass and stare at your boobs,” she says with a smirk.

“Not happening,“ Charlie says, pointedly crossing her arms across her chest.

“You were totally okay with me staring at them at the movies Friday night.” Jo smirks salaciously. “Didn’t seem like you minded my hands-on approach to learning, either.”

Predictably, Charlie blushes, and Jo doesn’t care what fashionistas think; redheads can _totally_ pull off pink. “You are not using my digits of pi shirt to cheat. I don’t care if it _is_ a holiday. My shirt isn’t going to function as your crib sheet.”

“Well then how the hell am I supposed to do this?”

“I don’t know,” admits Charlie over Jo’s groan of defeat. “What would Lin-Manuel Miranda do?”

“Write a motivational tweet to cheer me up?”

“Besides that.” Charlie licks her lips after enduring a few minutes of Jo’s bewildered silence, breaking it as she suggests, ”‘Alexander Hamilton’.“

“What about him?”

“Not the person, the _song_. You memorize lines really well and super fast, right?”

Jo pulls her feet off the table and into the chair with her, hugging her knees against her chest. A dancing BMO smiles back at her, lovingly rendered in Sharpie on her jeans. “Yeah, but how does that help now?”

“Rewrite one of the songs from _Hamilton,”_ says Charlie, like it’s simple, like everyone does it and Jo’s just behind the times. “Stick the numbers in, adjust syllables as needed, and ta-da! Mathemusical.”

Jo starts counting off syllables on her fingers as she leans back and stares up at the ceiling tiles. “It’s gonna fucking bug me if I can’t get the beat to match exactly.” She stops, staring at her nails, the neon green polish Charlie had applied last week beginning to chip. “There’s a word for that, isn’t there?”

“Synchronize. You know, if you paid attention in English--”

“I did for _The Yellow Wallpaper_ and _The Awakening,”_ Jo reminds her. “If Ms. Mills wants my full focus, she’s welcome to add more feminist literature to the syllabus.”

Charlie shakes her head. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m adorable.”

“Whatever you say, _Dean,”_ and Charlie rolls her eyes.

As if summoned, Dean plops down in the chair beside Jo, backpack and letterman jacket landing on the table with a resounding _thunk,_ causing Charlie to snatch up her gas station cappuccino. “Who’s besmirching my good name?”

“Be _-what-_ ing?” asks Jo, wrinkling her nose.

Cas slides in beside Dean, scooting their chairs beside each other so they’re practically cuddling, as per usual. Crowley settles in next to Charlie, bringing their queer little squad to five. Jo grins, bumping fists with him across the table, both of them fanning their hands out as they part. Crowley’s an oddball, and his mom’s a witch-and-a-half, but he’s decently strange, like any fellow weirdo theater kid should be.

“‘Besmirch,’” Cas begins, fiddling with their thick-rimmed black glasses, making the glitter on their eyelids catch in the fluorescent light and sparkle. “‘To sully or soil.’ So sayeth the Lord our Merriam-Webster.” They poke their head around Dean to tell Jo, “You really should pay more attention in English.”

“When they make vocab intersectional,” snaps Jo half-heartedly, “I will.”

Crowley laughs as he picks a piece of lint off of Charlie’s toboggan. “You can’t get more verbally-progressive than the Merriam-Webster, love.”

“And a dictionary shall lead them,” quips Cas. They accept the earbud Charlie hands them, nodding their head along to the music.

Dean leans back against Cas’ shoulder, crossing his arms over his chest. “You ready for Pi Day?”

“How did you--”

“I had to sit through Sam’s performance piece of a study session for, like, three hours last night,” Dean says.

Behind him, Cas mumbles, “It was very inconvenient and interrupted an otherwise acceptable groping.”

“Yeah, that.” Dean smiles at her. “So, are you?”

Before Jo can reply, Charlie tells him, “Jo’s going to reprise the titular song from _Hamilton_ for her poetry interp piece.”

“I _despise_ people who sing for their poetry pieces,” says Crowley. “Slimy, cheating menaces, the lot, and they always break at tournament!”

“Simmer down, Severus. This is just for geometry.” Charlie jazz hands at him. “Mathemagical!”

“Well _I_ think,” Dean begins, standing up, “that you should do ‘Yorktown’, instead.” To Jo’s horror, he starts to recreate it at the top of his lungs, dance included. “‘Hercules Mulligan, I need no introduction. When you knock me down, I get the fuck back up again!’”

“Sit, Winchester!” hisses Crowley. “You’re embarrassing us with your whiteness! Besides, _Hamilton_ is so last year.”

“Your--your _face_ is so last year!” But Cas pulls him down, practically into their lap, and then Dean’s too busy staring into his lovefriend’s eyes to bother with Crowley.

The one true shitshow on pause for the moment, Jo resumes hammering out the melody on her fingers. It isn’t as complex as she thought it would be. She steals Charlie’s pencil and begins to compose in the margin of her half-finished math homework.

“You can do this,” encourages Charlie. “I’ve seen you come up with enough crap off-the-cuff to know you can pull this off.”

But Jo doesn’t answer. She just keeps counting.

 

* * *

 

Jo lounges in her desk, picking nervously at her mini pie, one of dozens that Mrs. Singer made and sent in with her husband for Pi Day. The first few students had already tried and failed; the closest to success had been Dean’s kid brother, Sam, who got all the way to the 278th digit before he flubbed up. She almost convinces herself not to raise her hand to volunteer–if Winchester can’t do it, what chance does she have?–but sticks it up in the air anyway.

_Not gonna waste my shot,_ she reminds herself as the song echoes around inside her head for the umpteenth time.

Singer motions her up to stand in front of the board. Looking out at the class doesn’t affect her like it would some kids, but she’s never had an ounce of performance anxiety. Nevertheless, she’s grateful to look over at Charlie and see her girlfriend holding up her notebook with a sign that says, “They’re gonna be in the room where it happens!”

Jo finds her focal point, smiles widely, and begins.

 

_How is a perfect circle’s area found with a_

_Number ‘scovered by a thinker in a_

_Long ancient time as an irrational tool, a ratio_

_Of diameter to radius–_

_Count it out past three hundred places:_

 

The numbers fly from her memory, like she was born to do this, and Jo’s never been this confident in any academic endeavor in her life. Right now, in this moment, she’s the vice president of irrational numbers, a founding parent of pi; Sam’s staring at her like he’s really there, looking at Jo on stage. Half of her audience is mouthing along.

Jo makes it all the way to four hundred before she slips up. Mr. Singer is suitably impressed, awarding her twice as much extra credit as had been promised, though he does it in secret.

“Don’t be an idjit,” he tells her in confidence after class. “You mention this to the other kids and I’ll find a hundred-question pop quiz for all of you.” But Jo simply smiles; Singer’s gruff, but a real softy.

She walks down to lunch arm in arm with, “the most beautiful nerd in the herd,” enjoying the way Charlie’s blush creeps down her neck and under her Ravenclaw scarf. Jo takes a page from the _Dean and Cas Handbook for Gross PDA_ and kisses Charlie’s cheek, her jaw, the little spot behind her ear that makes her giggle.

As always, and as Jo honestly should have expected, Charlie’s practical tactical brilliance paid off. Her girlfriend’s proud smile? That’s better than any passing grade.

_Well,_ Jo amends to herself. _Almost._

**Author's Note:**

> [[about me](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/about)] [[tumblr](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/)] [[twitter](https://twitter.com/shiphitsthefan)]
> 
> This fic started life last year as a [tumblr ficlet](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/post/141070811989/bradbury-on-her-side). (Look at where we are. Look at where we started.)
> 
> As always, kudos and [comments](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/profile) validate my existence. <3


End file.
